How to Choose Growth Marketing Agency for SaaS Business
July 22, 2024
Hiring good growth marketing services can be a crucial decision for your SaaS or Tech business. Head of AM at Aimers Kseniya Leuko breaks down the step-by-step process for choosing a growth marketing agency and building a successful cooperation. From outlining your goals to scaling – Kseniya provides expert tips and insights to help you get the most out of your work with an agency.
While traditional marketing agency can be effective for building brand awareness and long-term customer loyalty, growth agencies are highly dynamic and focus on data-driven strategies to deliver scalable growth. To SaaS and Tech companies, they offer dynamic, data-focused approach, that traditional agency might lack.
Growth agencies provide a variety of optimizations for every part of the marketing machine, as well as advanced analytics and A/B testing. Their approach is flexible and agile, too. This is perfect for startups or companies operating in highly competitive and dynamic niches.
The unique offerings and specifics of a growth agency can be a perfect fit for your SaaS/Tech business, but you might not know where to start. In this article, I outline a step-by-step process for choosing a growth marketing agency and setting up a healthy and efficient cooperation.
1. Outline Your Objectives
Growth marketing agencies focus on delivering concrete business outcomes for your business. The worst thing you can do when approaching an agency is to be unclear about your goals and what you want to achieve.
So you need to start by defining specific and measurable goals, such as:
- increasing user acquisition,
- improving conversion rates,
- enhancing customer retention,
- and so on.
Also, you should single out the key metrics that are connected to these goals. These can be Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Lifetime Value (LTV), or Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). Ensure these align with your broader business strategy. We have an extensive list of SaaS-specific metrics that you need to track – you can check them out to enhance your approach.
When you have clear objectives, you can better communicate your expectations to potential agencies and assess their ability to deliver results. At the negotiation stage, a good agency will also help you to fine-tune your objectives to maximize outcomes and to align them to the current realities of your specific niche and the marketplace in general.
2. Determine Your Budget
At this stage, evaluate your budget, while considering the scale and scope of businesses you require. Ensure that your budget aligns with your growth objectives, as it’s essential to balance your financial constraints with the potential return on investment. And while it’s important to find the most cost-effective solutions, sometimes “cheap becomes expensive.” Prioritizing quality and expertise leads to more efficient spending in the long-term and significant benefits for your SaaS/Tech business.
3. See Growth Marketing Agency Options, Evaluate, and Make Your Pick
When set out to explore agency options, start by researching agencies that specialize in growth marketing for SaaS and Tech companies – as their unique expertise will be aligned with your needs.
A great place to start your research are online marketplaces, like Clutch and G2, since they aggregate service providers and offer advanced search options and reviews.
Evaluate each agency based on its track record, client testimonials, and case studies to understand their effectiveness and reliability. Pay close attention to their strategies and how they tailor their approach to meet the unique challenges of businesses in your niche.
Make a shortlist of agencies and schedule consultations with them to discuss your objectives, budget, and expectations. Compare their pricing and offerings. Gauge their responsiveness and ability to customize solutions for your business. See if they demonstrate a clear understanding of your goals and a collaborative approach to achieving them.
After all this research and communication with several agencies, you will be well-equipped to select an agency that will be a good fit for you.
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Get In Touch4. Setting Cooperation With a Growth Marketing Agency
It’s important to remember that you will work with the agency as if they are an extension of your team. One of the misconceptions I see on the client side sometimes is thinking they can outsource operational control of part of their marketing to the agency, and forget about it.
A fruitful cooperation won’t work like that. You will have to communicate a lot and regularly. You will need to onboard your agency team on the specifics of your product. And you will need to ensure that your agency is aligned with you on your goals and vision and can adapt to your pace.
a) Goals and budgets
Take the goals you’ve developed at the first stage to your agency. Communicate to them what success looks like for your SaaS/Tech business. Outline a realistic budget that balances your financial capacity with the growth targets you aim to achieve.
b) Immerse your agency into your product and business
A good growth agency will already know quite a lot about SaaS and Tech industry in general, but you will have to onboard them into your product specifics and unique aspects of your business. After you’ve signed all the necessary NDA documentation, share with your agency:
- your overall business goals
- detailed customer’s journey
- your pain points (your agency is invested in solving them for you to build a win-win cooperation)
- previous negative experiences with the agency if any (to avoid repetition of the same pitfalls)
A seasoned agency will make sure they fill in all the blanks and ask you for the information they need – but you have to be open to sharing it.
c) Concrete KPIs
Again, discuss the KPIs that you’ve developed at the first stage with your agency. You might need to fine-tune them, and your agency might also offer the metrics that you haven’t considered. In the end, you need to agree on the KPIs that your agency will deliver on, such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and conversion rates. These will allow you to track the performance of your agency’s marketing efforts. A good agency will also help you with making forecasts on KPIs performance.
d) Reporting Structure
Communication and reporting are often underestimated, but are key for a good cooperation. Make sure the agency provides a reporting structure that includes regular updates and performance reviews, ensuring all stakeholders are informed of progress and challenges. Check if they are flexible in the reporting format and frequency and can adapt to your needs.
e) Growth Plan
An experienced agency aimed at long-term win-win cooperation will provide a clear roadmap for achieving your growth goals. One of the aspects of it is that they will regularly develop comprehensive growth plans for you. These will include timelines, strategy milestones, and how your agency team plans to reach them.
There is a key point I want to make when it comes to cooperation with your agency. You will need to have a clear structure in place on how to evaluate the performance of your agency and have instruments in place for tracking the progress. A good agency will assist you in setting up these structures, but you have to ensure that everything is done on your side.
5. Learn More About Your Agency Culture
An expert tip I’d like to add for the stage of evaluation and setting cooperation is to pay attention to your agency’s business culture and values. During pre-sale communication, look at their communication style, response time, and manner of handling your requests. Of course, it’s also important to consider the expertise and dynamics of the agency’s team, as their skills and cohesion will be crucial in driving your growth objectives.
Even though you don’t need to build personal relations with the agency team, ask yourself whether you are ready to trust them and take them on as an extension of your in-house team.
6. Scale Your Growth Marketing Agency Involvement
As your SaaS or Tech business grows, consider gradually increasing the scope of your growth agency’s involvement to tackle more ambitious targets. One of the advantages of working with an agency is being able to scale your team without extra in-house hires. You are also getting access to the collective knowledge and experience of all professionals in your agency, which, I think, is a great benefit of hiring the agency in general.
At the same time, you need to understand and accept the certain technicalities of working with an agency team. Since they are not fully onboarded into your organization, they might ask more questions and require clarification on things you consider “obvious”. They could be in a different time zone, which might slow their reply times.
Regularly review the agency’s performance and outcomes to better understand when and how to scale their efforts. A healthy cooperation with a good marketing agency will ensure sustained growth for your business, while allowing you to adapt to new market opportunities and challenges.
Takeaways
Here are the key takeaways that I know will help you find a great growth marketing agency for you:
- Clearly outline your objectives and goals before you approach a growth marketing agency.
- Evaluate your budget and ensure it aligns with the growth objectives for your business.
- Research and evaluate various agency options that specialize in growth marketing for SaaS and Tech companies.
- Communicate your goals to your agency and immerse them into your product and business specifics. Moreover, finalize the concrete KPIs that will allow you to monitor your agency’s efficiency.
- Pay attention to the culture and values of the agency during the evaluation and onboarding process.
- Establish a clear reporting structure and growth plan for your agency – this ensures successful cooperation.
- Scale your growth agency’s involvement as your business grows. Regularly review their performance and concrete results.
Do you want Aimers to help you grow your SaaS/Tech business? Drop a line to our team, and we’ll get back to you shortly with possible avenues of cooperation to reach your goals.
Kseniya leads the account management team, focusing on building strong client relationships and ensuring customer satisfaction. She is committed to delivering exceptional service and support to our clients.